Numbers
Chapter 7

I don’t know how long I was unconscious; I don’t know where I was taken. All I know is that some significant amount of time later I opened my eyes. I looked around and realized I was very alone. I was sitting in the middle of a metal room with my hands tied behind my back. There was nothing else in the room save for the door directly in front of me. There were no windows, not even the one sided ones. The only source of light was the swinging light bulb above me, casting strange shadows as it slowly swung back and forth.

Fear built inside me. I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t know what to think. My brain refused to work. The only thing that I could process was the fact that I was kidnapped. I was taken from my home. The one place that was mine, the one place I could escape, the one place I could escape the nightmare of the institute. My breath came in pants, my head stared to spin. I thought I was going to lose consciousness again. Was this what my staff had gone through?

I stopped. If this had anything to do with my staff I knew who could walk through that door at any minute. There was nothing I could do. I searched the room for a way out; I tested my hands in their binds. Nothing was going to get loose; I wasn’t going to get out easily. The rope around my stomach was just as tightly tied; I wouldn’t be able to untie that without my hands. I sighed, it echoed eerily in the empty, metal room.

There was a noise on the other side of the door. Someone was coming in, I tensed. Julianne walked into the room. I drew an unsteady breath and met her gaze. Her eyes were stone cold, it was as if she was a different person altogether. She walked forward until she was standing before me. She then raised her hand and pressed something into my forehead. I could feel the cold of metal being forced into my skull. I could feel the hole in the metal where lied my ultimate doom. I closed my eyes and quivered. She was pointing a gun at my head.

“What do you know?”

Her voice matched her eyes, it was nearly lifeless. I slowly opened my eyes and looked up at her. She was dressed the same as always. Her business suit was pristine as always, she looked like she should be in an office typing not holding a gun. I licked my lips, “I don’t know anything.”

I heard the safety click off, “I swear,” I exclaimed, “I only thought…I only guessed at the information. Injecting alien DNA is the only way to explain the wondrous phenomenon that is occurring in the institute!”

She turned on the safety and calmly turned the gun so she was holding the muzzle in her hand. She drew her hand back and brought the gun across my face. Pain erupted on my cheek. I tasted the odd taste of iron. I felt the blood running down my chin from my mouth. I turned back to Julianne, she no longer had the gun pointed at me but she just stood staring. I focused on my breathing, I focused on keeping calm. It wasn’t really working. “I had hoped,” Julianne purred with that icy tone, “that you would keep to yourself. I had hoped to spare you this. Apparently I had misjudged you.”

She raised the gun to strike me again; I shied away against my will. Julianne grinned at my reaction. “You’re sick,” I growled, “you and your…puppets are not working for humanity you’re working against it! You can’t keep going on with this without someone finding out, or do you have all of them under your thumb as well?”

Julianne’s grin faded and her eyes narrowed. I tensed waiting for the next blow I was sure was to come. Instead she turned on her heel and walked to the door. She knocked her knuckles against the door then turned back to me. She hadn’t gotten all the way back before the door opened again, this time admitting someone I didn’t recognize.

It was a tall man of sturdy built that came through the door. He didn’t wear a white coat or anything else that would mark him as one of the institute staff. He regarded Julianne as he closed the door behind him, and still kept his eye on her as he stepped forward to join her in front of me. Julianne only had a glare for me, “Make her talk,” she growled.

The man looked me up and down. Weighing me with her eyes, I felt more violated with that gaze then I ever had before. Then, quicker than my eyes could follow, he grabbed a handful of my hair and pulled me backwards until only the back two legs were on the floor. I tensed fearing the wrong move would both send me to the floor and rip out my hair in the same instant. The man’s grip was hard and unmerciful, I saw Julianne grin again as I stifled a grunt.

“You will tell me,” Julianne purred stepping so close to my face I could feel her breath brushing my cheeks, “When he’s done you’ll wish you had spoken freely when I was kind the first time.”

She disappeared from my vision but I heard her heels clicking on the floor as she made her way to the door. I heard the door open and shut then the grip on my hair was gone. I flew forward at a startling speed. “So,” the man said suddenly from behind me, “You’re keeping secrets. I’m not that crazy about secrets…hate ’em to tell the truth,” he came back into my line of sight as he rolled up his sleeves, “But what could keep your little mouth shut I wonder? What would you take a beating over? What would you die over, missy?”

I met his eyes and forced myself not to flinch away. What did they want from me? What secret did they want? How did they expect me to answer if I didn’t know the question? I was still pondering these questions as the man planted his fist in my stomach, forcing the wind from my lungs. Everything flew from my mind as I focused on breathing. “Just tell them what they want to know,” the man mused, his eyes drinking me in and a smile of pleasure growing on his lips, “and this will all end.”

I sucked in gasping breath as I forced my tongue to work, “I don’t know anything,’ I rasped painfully.

The man tisked regretfully, eyes twinkling, “that’s not the correct answer, missy,” he sent his hand flying to my nose.

Pain exploded again sending spots before my eyes. I felt blood pour from my nose, my eyes started to water, and I believe I whimpered as the pain sank down to my toes. I drew another breath and looked back up from the man, he simply stared back waiting for something I could not give, I remember thinking his eyes were as cold as Julianne’s. He shook his head as his eyes traveled the length of my body, and then I don’t really remember what happened. I remember pain. I remember groaning. I remember repeating my claim to not know anything. And then I remember that everything stopped. I’m not sure it would be correct to say that I slept. I don’t think balancing on the edge of consciousness because of pain truly counts as sleeping.

The next thing I remember is the door opening again. That’s when I became aware of my surroundings again. I felt my shoulders aching from being bent behind me and holding me up since I had fallen forward at some point during the beating. I felt the pulsing pain from everywhere: my stomach, my nose, and my legs. I could hear my breath coming in gasps, with every breath the pain was renewed. I could imagine broken bones, fractures, or bruises decorating my body. I imagined what I must look like; the blood dried on my face since I had been unable to wipe any of it away, the bruises, some of which were probably visible. I imagined two black eyes, swollen cheeks, a split lip, yet this was all in my mind’s eye. I was probably imagining it a lot worse than it actually was.

I forced myself to look up but my head felt like it weighed a thousand pounds, the moment that I tried to raise my head it immediately fell back down. I didn’t have to wait long for someone to grab a fist full of my hair and force my head back; I was then looking directly in Julianne’s eyes. I sucked in a sudden breath; I felt my muscles tense involuntarily and my eyes widen as far as my bruises allowed.

Julianne wore different clothes then the last time she had entered the room, how long had I been here? “Are you ready to talk, Doctor?”

I took a deep breath, preparing what was to come from my answer, “I don’t know what you want from me.”

Julianne rolled her eyes and threw my head down; I heard her heels clicking on the floor as she walked away from me. I tried to control my breathing, I forced my head to look up and I forced my eyes to follow Julianne as she walked toward the door. “One of these days I’m going to get sick of these games, Doctor. When that day comes I suggest you answer anything I ask you.”

The faces of the bodies flashed before my eyes. I pictured the officers horrified look as I told him the truth, I envisioned Cynthia’s stone glare of suspicion, and saw Rose’s curious glint that appeared in her eye when she caught onto an interesting story. I heard Luke’s laugh and practically felt his playful slap on my arm and I watched as Gab slowly smiled at a clever saying. But most of all I felt Paul’s hand on the small of my back as he walked past me, I heard his soft laugh, and I saw him turn a strange gaze on me as I mentioned something he hadn’t thought of. Then I was back in that horrible room. I was back watching Julianne walk towards the door, I was back to the horror that was the metal room.

“I don’t know what you want from me,” I croaked, defeated, refusing to let the pictures and memories flash again.

Julianne turned back to me, her eyes were as stone cold as they had been before, “Answers, Doctor. I want answers.”

“For what? Ask them and I will answer!”

Julianne smirked and took a step toward me, away from the door, “what do you know?”

I felt anger build in me, “About what! What do I know about what?”

That only made Julianne smirk more, I forced myself to breathe and wait. But she didn’t say anything; she just studied me as if I was something foreign. Something that she was trying to take apart with her eyes, the look made me shiver, it made me uneasy. It wasn’t much different from the last few times Julianne had looked at me. Slowly, painfully slowly, she smiled, “The bodies,” she purred.

The sound of her voice echoed through the room. It bounced off the walls and came back to my ears again and again. The faces flashed before my eyes again, but not just the six that still lived. Number 53 seemed to stare at me from over Julianne’s shoulder, then it was it was 582 with an energy field floating above his palm, and then it was 525 with a lightning bolt flashing over her head. My head was spinning, “That’s not much to go on,” I murmured.

“Then I’ll leave you to your thoughts,” she turned on her heel and this time didn’t stop at the door, the man stepped through before it had time to close behind her. He cracked his knuckles and smiled down at me, I thought I saw a twinkle of lust in his eyes before he stepped forward and planted himself before my chair.

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